Home » Solving the Climate Crisis
One of the most pressing issues facing the global community in the 21st Century is climate change. All over the world, human consumption and carbon emissions threaten species’ and ecosystems’ existence. Intricately balanced environmental habitats are on the verge of being irrevocably damaged and a number of factors that could endanger human life loom on the horizon. With catastrophic consequences at stake for Americans and the world if no action is taken, DFA members have mobilized at the forefront calling for worldwide change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC) has been studying climate change for 20 years. The latest IPCC report, conducted in 2007, involved contributions from more than 2500 scientific experts, 800 contributing authors, and 450 lead authors from over 130 countries. There is a clear consensus that man-made climate change is real, and that it poses a significant threat to not only plant and animal life, but to humanity as well.
Rising ocean levels and increasingly violent storms threaten to displace hundreds of millions of people, while shifting weather patterns have the ability to leave millions more without adequate supplies of food and water.
In addition, the rapid consumption of nonrenewable resources such as fossil fuels has led many to speculate that peak oil (the time at which the maximum amount of petroleum is extracted from the Earth, and after which dwindling petroleum reserves will wreak unfathomable damage on the worldwide economy) could occur as early as 2020. This would leave the industrialized nations of the world with an increasingly small, expensive supply of oil to power critical utilities.
America’s economic future depends on continuing our tradition of innovation and discovery. America currently spends approximately $630 billion a year importing oil, when instead we could be making billions exporting environmentally-safe, renewable energy technologies.
In the face of this tremendous responsibility, DFA members sense not only an emerging threat, but also the great opportunity for societal and economic advancement. DFA members have fought for conservation policies in local communities and worked together to reduce the use of household electricity by replacing light bulbs and conserving energy. We have increased education on the risks and the solutions with screenings of green documentaries like Kilowatt Ours and An Inconvenient Truth.
Democracy for America was the first carbon-neutral political action committee, and our members have chosen to invest carbon offsets into wind farms and alternative energy resources. DFA realizes that, like many other issues, our grassroots movement has the ability to change the way the world works. Together, DFA will prepare the United States for and lead the world towards a new, more responsible, more prosperous future of energy consumption and environmental awareness.
